A few months ago, all anyone could talk about for a week was chatbots for Facebook Messenger and a few other platforms. For days, it seemed they were the second coming, the text-based talkers that would do for chat what Alexa on the Amazon Echo does for moving your mouth and vocal cords. Then... silence. Well, not exactly—we got distracted with Pokemon Go, after all (LOOK, A GRIMER!).

Turns out that in those few months, however, developers have been going nuts creating Facebook "conversational UIs" to talk with. Last count was around 11,000. That's a lot o' bots. The tools are only getting better for developers, so the bots are only going to get better for consumers talking to them.

But that said, which bots are really worth the chat time at this point? You can certainly go take a look and find your own, but we did some of the work for you, and narrowed it down to this list of the nine best to date.

1
Poncho

A kitty in a poncho is the avatar to this upbeat weather bot called, naturally, Poncho. Visit the link, say Hi and give Poncho the name of your city (but don't try City and State... Poncho couldn't handle "Ithaca NY" but did fine with just Ithaca). Poncho sets up times to send you a morning and afternoon weather brief. You can go back and ask for forecasts or enter settings (to change location or go from F to C degrees) anytime. Don't get too creative with what you ask; just type "help" for a list of phrases Poncho can parse.

2
HealthTap

Who needs WebMD? Ask the HealthTap bot a question about your malady. Based on what you ask, the bot will display a series of articles it thinks pertain to your described symptoms. Each article link notes how many doctors have referenced it to users. More specific follow-up questions are an option, but it might take 24 to 48 hours to get a response, or you can pay for a premium service to get quick response for $25. Remember, if it's a real emergency, call 9-1-1. Healthtap also makes a mobile app.

3
Kayak

This isn't a version of the site/app rejiggered to somehow work as a bot. The Kayak bot handles just about any travel question you can think of. You can link the bot to your Kayak Trips account to get up-to-date changes in itinerary. But obviously the big thing is to ask about flights, hotels, travel, and deals ("where can I go for $500?") and more. Kayak will ask the follow-up questions needed ("when do you want to fly back?") to find you the deals.

4
CNN

The news service's bot does an excellent job of shooting you the headlines every day on the top stories, complete with images. You can read the whole story or get a summary. At any time you can "Ask CNN" about a topic with one word, like "politics" or "space" or "travel" or "pokemon" and get even more headlines.

5
Hello Jarvis

Jarvis is an owl, but maybe he should be a parrot. He repeats back the things you want to be reminded of at the time you designate. It's that simple, but incredibly handy (as long as you have Facebook Messenger on hand at the time of the reminder). This is kind of a low-rent version of what you get with more serious AI assistants like Cortana or Siri (for now). Someday, Facebook M, the social network's own AI assistant, will take up residence in Messenger, but until then, Jarvis has the reminder part handled, at least.

6
Assist

Assist is another AI assistant, but it skips the reminders in favor of a menu of options that include: get a ride, food delivery, reservations, send flowers, hire a courier, discover places, event tickets, book hotels, and even send a letter via snail mail. Obviously, some of these (like that last one) have a fee involved. The folks behind this bot are also powering other bots, like the one used by 1-800-Flowers.

7
Alex WikiMessenger – Wikipedia Bot

The top-hat clad Alex WikiMessenger is a shortcut app to get you to Wikipedia articles. It's that simple: type a message about a topic you're into, and Alex will say he's thinking about the same thing and display the pertinent articles.

8
MemeGenerator Bot

Like to create meme images like the legendary "One does not simply (walk into Mordor)" or "Yeah, that'd be great" from Office Space, or many others? This bot pulls up the image to go with what you want to say. You type in your pithy bit of word-play for the top and bottom of the image, and it automatically creates it for you, suitable for forwarding as desired.

9
Surveybot

This is less a bot for you to talk to than a service that helps you create a bot survey to interact with others on Facebook. So it's primarily for a business with Facebook-based customers, but it can work for anyone. Go into Surveybot.io, sign in with a Facebook account (specifically one that has a Facebook Page), and create a short survey. You'll soon be gleaning information from all over.

About the Author

Eric narrowly averted a career in food service when he began in tech publishing at Ziff-Davis over 25 years ago. He was on the founding staff of Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine (all defunct, and it's not his fault). He's the author of two novels, BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale"--Publishers' Weekly) an... See Full Bio

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